Sunday...

We have been cat-sitting Charlie in shifts.  He would probably be fine left on his own overnight but I want to make sure he uses the cat litter and that the end results of that are normal (nice) and the steroids are making him ravenous so he often needs a little snackette to keep him going and then we have the catflap open for the others to come in otherwise they will stop using the flaps and expect the doors to be opened for them but whilst they can come in they cannot get out (otherwise Charlie would be able to too) so you have to be ready to let them out when they want to go.  Over the last couple of nights I have settled down on the sofa with Charlie at bedtime and then John will come in very early and we do a swap so I get a couple of hours uninterrupted sleep in the bed.  One night Minnie waltzed in and calmly made her way to the litter tray, did a little wee and then demanded to be let out.  I didn't even know she was aware there was a tray in the loo and she can be quite lazy when it comes to going to the loo so I don't want her thinking that is a new convenience for her to use.  Another time Chivers came in and he and Charlie have a love/hate relationship at the best of times so I had to referee that encounter.  Last night Boris decided to keep me company but he bagged the bit of the sofa where the seats meet the back and stretched out almost the entire length leaving me with a wafer to lie on and then he proceeded to push me away with his paws.  He was super happy and remained like that for a good few hours before getting up and demanding to be let out.  During the course of this Charlie took it upon himself to visit the cat litter, dig to Australia, have a deeply satisfying and smelly bowel movement and then return to his bed.  I have to say that this morning I was so happy when John came in and I could hand over the baton.  I was exhausted.

We are now well and truly into Autumn so we are being greeted by some pretty spectacular sunrises (and sunsets I would suspect but we don't see them from here).  John took this on his phone and I know he wont have doctored it in any way because he just doesn't know how to.

We are always glad when the cats decide to be in with us on a Sunday as the hunting season is back and sadly they have rather a gung-ho attitude to put it mildly.  They are allowed to shoot specific birds and wildlife on specific days but they cannot possibly identify what they are shooting sufficiently in advance to ensure they shoot the right thing.  I understand about hunting being an integral part of the Cypriot culture but there is so little wildlife in evidence it seems such a shame.

After a full and frank discussion over the type of potatoes I was going to serve for lunch today I stood my ground and opted for roast.  I think it fair to say that I triumphed with my roasties which were served with an autumnal sausage casserole which was flavoured with caramelised onions, ginger, apple, cinnamon, orange and quince.  I rarely use my proper oven and produce my meals using the hob, my combi microwave and the slow cooker.  Planned properly and prepared in advance (7p's Elena - proper prior preparation prevents piss poor performance) it makes for a reasonably stressless occasion - this is how I want Christmas Day to be - no setting the cooker on fire (which I nearly did on our first Christmas here) and sorry but no dozen different veg which I did subsequently.  Our meal was topped off with a very very nice cheesecake courtesy of Lidl which was lemon and mascapone and very nice too.

Today we have reintroduced Mum to the joys of UNO - this is important as it will be one of the three games that we will be playing in our challenge over Christmas along with Noms and Rummikub - I have scheduled in one games session each day to stop us getting bored!!!  I cannot believe she is someone who hasn't played this for some time because let's just say neither John nor I won today.

As we approach the shortest day we are mindful of Mum driving back home in reasonable light.  It isn't that we want to get rid of her it is just that until we get that text to say she is home we worry and it occurred to me that both John and I had had a G&T before lunch and a glass of wine with it so we wouldn't really want to be driving anywhere.

Tomorrow afternoon we are off to the vets with Charlie - hopefully they may be able to shed some light on the facial nerve which is not functioning - we haven't seen any progress with that since his accident last week.